


Upon The Furthest Slope

by thesleepingsatellite



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-06 19:19:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1869381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesleepingsatellite/pseuds/thesleepingsatellite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not for the first time, Mako marvels at how the nightmarish beasts from The War have become such simple playthings in the hands of her children, who have known nothing of the pain and terror that plagued her own childhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Upon The Furthest Slope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aeiouna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeiouna/gifts).



> Kid fic for a lovely recipient who enjoys such things.

A squeal catches her attention, and Mako raises her eyes from the tablet in her hands just in time to see her son reel backwards, a yell of “Mommy!” on his lips. He lets go of his toy Jaeger – a near perfect miniature replica of the _Gipsy Danger_ – to brace himself on his hands, preventing his head from hitting the ground. His little sister scoops the Jaeger up off the grass, a triumphant smile across her face as she grapples it against the miniature Kaiju she brandishes in her other small fist.

Satoru whips his head around her, a frown on his darling face. “Kayoko pushed me!” 

“Kayoko!” Mako scolds. “Give it back this instant, and then come over here.”

Her daughter frowns and pretends that she hadn’t heard Mako, and the Jaeger in her hands delivers a backhand chop to the Kaiju lying on the ground before her.

“Kayoko,” Mako says, her tone a warning. Kayoko finally looks up at her mother, holding her gaze before finally dropping the toys with a pout. Mako watches her as she pushes off the floor and sticks her tongue out at her brother before finally coming to stand in front of Mako’s chair.

Mako puts her tablet down and leans forward to talk to her daughter on her level. Kayoko looks up at her with wide, dark six-year-old eyes full of defiance tinged with the smallest amount of fear. “Sweetheart,” Mako begins. “I’ve asked you not to push your brother around. Do I have to separate the two of you to get you to play nicely?” 

“No,” Kayoko says. 

“Because I can send you up to your room, if you want.” 

Kayoko shakes her head, her shoulder-length hair swirling around her head like a black curtain caught in the wind. 

“Okay,” Mako says. “Go back and say you’re sorry to your brother for pushing him, and then, if you can play nicely with him, you can stay.”

Kayoko looks up at her with pleading eyes. “Don’t wanna say sorry.”

“Kayoko,” Mako says patiently. “Do you want to go to your room?”

Kayoko casts a glance behind her, to where her big brother is playing with the Jaeger and Kaiju figures, his head tilted away from them in a display of indifference, and Mako knows that he is listening very carefully to every word they say. Kayoko to face her once more and Mako can see the gears turning in her head. 

“Can I just hug him instead?” 

Mako considers. Kayoko had always been a child who preferred to show her affection and feelings about people through actions rather than words. Sorry is the hardest word for her daughter to say, and Mako thinks it is because her daughter is tough and holds herself to a higher standard than any other six-year-old, and that she hates admitting to herself or anybody else that she did something wrong. 

“Sure,” Mako says, relenting. “Then play nicely with him.”

“Okay, Mom,” Kayoko replies, before turning away. Mako watches as she walks over to where her older brother sits on the grass and leans down to awkwardly wrap her arms around his shoulders in a quick semblance of a hug that is accompanied by a little grunt. Kayoko then plops herself down beside her brother, and they start to play Kaiju War again as if nothing had happened. 

Mako smiles as she watches them huddled together under the warm late-afternoon sun in their lush, green back yard. Satoru’s Leatherback charges Kayoko’s _Crimson Typhoon_ and they grapple on the floor in a pile of flailing plastic limbs clasped by tiny hands. Not for the first time, Mako marvels at how the nightmarish beasts from The War have become such simple playthings in the hands of her children, who have known nothing of the pain and terror that plagued her own childhood.

She becomes absorbed in her book, but the children never allow themselves to escape her attention for long. Within minutes, Satoru appears at the side of her chair, his small hand pawing at her arm. She smiles at him, because she doesn’t mind their little interruptions, as long as the children are not fighting with each other. She especially loves these distractions when her son looks at her, as he is now, with an expression that is equal parts rapt attention and adoration.

“Hey Mom,” he says, his voice a hushed whisper. “Is it true that you and Daddy fought the Kaiju for real?”

She pauses. Though her children were aware that she and Raleigh were involved in the Defense Corps, they had done their best to shield their children from the details. Still, Satoru is eight years old and wise beyond his years. She thinks that maybe it is time to start revealing the past to him.

“It is true,” she says, choosing her words carefully. “And we won.”

“Really?” He asks, his eyes wide.

She nods. “Really.”

“Did you kill them with the plasma canon?”

“Yeah,” She says, allowing herself a small smile as she whispers to him. “And with a nuclear bomb.”

His jaw drops. “Woah,” he says, before grinning at her, all gaps and teeth that are too large for his face. “That’s really cool, Mom,” he says.

“I am glad you think so,” she smiles back at him, strangely thrilled to have his approval. 

He presses a kiss to her cheek before turning to run back to where his sister is splashing her Kaiju figure in the pool’s shallow end. “ _Crimson Typhoon_ to the rescue!” he bellows, descending upon the Kaiju to defend the small city of sandbox boxes erected beside the pool.

Suddenly, an immense shadow falls over her backyard and a bone-shaking, guttural roar breaks the tranquility. A bolt of panic shoots through Mako, sharp and piercing, and she looks up to see a massive Kaiju looming above her. Her eyes widen in fear and disbelief as she looks at it: the monster is broad and stocky, with scaled black skin and protruding ears. Its six visible eyes stare down at her terrifyingly tiny children, and as she watches, its jaw unhinges, exposing the glowing blue maw of its gullet, to let loose a deafening roar. 

She has not faced a Kaiju outside the protective shell of a Jaeger since the Onibaba attacked Tokyo when she was a child, and she feels terrifyingly exposed without her armour, without Raleigh by her side. She scrambles from her chair, desperate to scoop up her children and move them out of harm’s way, possessed by the need to flee. 

“Come on!” she screams, running to them. She grabs Satoru’s arm and tries to yank him to his feet, but he only stares up at her, his delicate eyebrows draw together over unconcerned eyes.

“What’s wrong?” he asks her, smiling up at her with a blissfully unconcerned expression. 

“We have to run!” 

“Can’t you just throw a nuclear bomb at it?”

Her jaw drops, and she stares at him, desperate for him to move before grabbing at Kayoko’s shoulder, still keeping a firm grasp on Satoru’s arm. Kayoko only laughs at her and twists away, lifting the miniature Kaiju upward to greet the monster hovering over them, blocking out the sun. Mako’s eyes follow the motion of Kayoko’s hand, and she watches as the real Kaiju lifts a massive foot above their heads. She screams and-

She wakes up.

Her eyes snap open to the darkness of her bedroom. She gasps and the sound is loud in the room, which is silent except for Raleigh’s gentle snoring beside her. The dream’s hold on her remains, and her heart beats hard and fast in her chest, driven by the adrenaline coursing through her system. She feels a sheen of sweat on her forehead and upper lip, cool in the night air.

Mako closes her eyes tightly, and forces herself to take a deep breath. She imagines serenity traveling into her body with the breath to wash away the horror of the dream, and holds her breath before letting it out of her body with a whooshing sound.

Raleigh stirs beside her. “Hey,” he says, his voice rough and gravelly with sleep. “You okay?”

She bites her lip and turns to him, opening her eyes to see him studying her. “Hai,” she says, her voice a whisper.

“You have that dream again?” 

She nods tightly. “Yes,” she says again, in English this time. 

“I hate that dream,” he answers, rolling toward her to drape an arm around her shoulders, and she knows that he’s not referring just to hers. Kaiju nightmares had become a common experience among those who had close encounters with them, and she and her husband had been closer to the Kaiju than most. They dreams had decreased in frequency over the years to a point where they seemed to come monthly instead of nightly, but that didn’t make them any easier to bear.

She presses close to her husband, to the warm solidity of his body, allowing herself to be held before pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“I think I will go check on the children,” she says, slipping silently out of bed. 

He rolls over onto his back. “You do that. Don’t be too long.”

“I won’t.”

Mako moves down the hallway, and pauses before her son’s bedroom before pushing the door open. She pads over to his bed. The moonlight streams in through the nearby window, casting a bright rectangle of light over his features. She brushes his hair out of his face and smiles down at him, marveling at the peacefulness of his sleep. Mako was younger than Satoru when the Kaiju attacked Tokyo, and she hasn’t slept soundly since then. 

She creeps out of the room and moves to Kayoko’s door. It creaks when it opens – she has meant to fix that for some time – and she hears her daughter stir in bed when the door opens.

“Mama?” A croaky voice comes from the bed. 

Mako walks to the side of Kayoko’s bed. “Yes,” she says. “Just checking to see if you are okay.”

“I’m okay,” Kayoko says, snuggling with her pillow. She yawns and looks up. “Are you okay, Mama?”

“I am okay also. ”

Kayoko stirs in her bed. “D’you wanna snuggle with me?” 

Mako considers, and then crawls into bed with her daughter. Kayoko snuggles up next to her and Mako puts an arm around her daughter’s form. Mako feels her body start to relax, finally casting off the last remnants of the dream as Kayoko’s breathing evens out into the rhythmic tones of deep slumber. She closes her eyes, and breathes in time with her daughter, trying to follow her into sleep.

She and Raleigh had debated having children many times. Mako had resisted, for so many reasons. Chief amongst them was the worry that the Kaiju would return, and that it was unwise to bring children into a world that could so easily be revisited by those horrors. The very last thing she would wish for her children would be that they experience the tragedy of losing their parents to the Kaiju as she had. With her and Raleigh’s ongoing involvement in the Jaeger program, there would be a very good chance that the children would lose one or both of their parents if the breech were to open again. As for the other possibility – that the Kaiju would return and rip her children away from her – well. She dared not think about that, for that way lay pain. 

Ultimately, Mako had relented to her husband’s desire for children, because she wanted a family of her own, one built with Raleigh, her best friend and partner, after having lost her parents so many years ago. Lying with her arms wrapped tight around her child, she knows that she agreed to have children for selfish reasons, also. A much as she had loved Stacker, she had felt adrift since her parents’ death, and she was desperate to feel rooted. 

Every day she wonders whether she made the correct decision. At this moment, holding her sleeping child in her arms, she is simultaneously terrified that it was the wrong choice and absolutely certain it was the correct one.


End file.
